Americanswers… on 5 Live! Is Donald Trump the only regulation AI needs?

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1:00For the full story, listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Why is Donald Trump doubling down on AI at the very moment that the bosses of AI warn that the technology needs to be slowed down? Also, why is Donald Trump suddenly in favour of the unification of Ireland? When it comes to giving every American citizen$5 ,000 if the Republicans win both houses of Congress in the midterm elections, how realistic is that? And another big question from Congress. Mitch McConnell, the former leader of the Republicans in the Senate, is back now or is he? And why does it matter so much?

1:39Welcome to America Answers. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league. The tide is coming. And this time we intend to win it all. See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenceless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. When I'm not around, you're going to be broke. There's not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about anybody else.

2:21It's the first time I've had those news titles. They're good, aren't they? A never-ending supply of interesting sound bites that America produces. Yes. Long may it continue. On the subject of which, we've just had some breaking news from the AFP. Donald Trump blasts sick conspiracy against AI. This is further comments from the president on artificial intelligence. So over the weekend, we had two more AI bosses, Elon Musk and Sam Altman, backing the head of Anthropic, Dario Amodi, who'd called to slow down the pace of AI development. He had warned AI swarm could become capable of taking over the entire internet within a year.

3:01Well, speaking on his trip to Ireland, President Trump was asked about further regulation yesterday. We're leading China in AI. We're the most sophisticated country in the world. And frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins. And we can put guardrails, we can do this and that. But I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up. And they're bringing up things that won't happen. But whoever wins with AI wins. That's what Donald Trump was saying. Right, we've got some questions on this exact topic. Robin emails, americast.bbc.co.uk.

3:35We need to change our approach to AI and safety. Instead of regulating AI like an industry, should we be guiding its behaviour like you would bringing up a child? Kevin in Kent asked the BBC, How is it possible for a slowdown to be imposed, particularly as AI is close to the stage, of recursive self-improvement which won't need human intervention? Sarah, it doesn't sound like Donald Trump is about to heed these calls for a slowdown. No, you're right. He is very, very clear that he doesn't want to impose a kind of safeguards or regulations around AI companies that some of them, they themselves, are calling for.

4:11It was in a Truth Social post just a few minutes ago where he said there was a sick conspiracy against AI. And he also said the only controller guardrails that AI needs is a strong and smart, high IQ president, and the USA has that in spades. So that tells you where he is on the issue. What's interesting, though, is he's very, very far away from public opinion on this. All the polling shows, the voters are genuinely concerned about the possible threats from AI, and also very, very worried about huge data centres being built in their areas, which is something that there's a great deal of public upset about.

4:45But Donald Trump said the other day that anybody who doesn't want a data centre near them wants to continue to be poor for the rest of their lives. So there's a very strange disconnect going on between him and people. He usually has a better handle on how they're feeling. But on this one, it's all the tech bros who are in and out of the White House, who've contributed so many millions to his campaigns, seem to be the ones who've got him on side. Sumi, what's your lead on this? Yeah, you know, I think with the latest Truth Social post from President Trump, what he is missing there is it's not just Dario Amadai who has had some clashes with the Trump administration, in particular with the Pentagon over the use of Anthropik and its models in government.

5:22It is also Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI. It is also Elon Musk, a number of industry leaders now actually throwing their weight behind the idea of the need to slow down or pace AI, as they have said. And I've spoken to a number of analysts who say that that zero-sum game with China isn't necessarily as it's being painted as a national security imperative. Because China also has a vested interest in making sure that their own AI models, think about their Kimi-3 model, which also kind of broke out of a testing environment as we understand, that their own models also don't pose a risk to China and their companies and their people.

5:59So in any discussions with China when Xi Jinping comes here in a few weeks' time to visit President Trump for a summit at the White House, there is real common ground possibly for some sort of regulation on a global scale. But what Sarah said about President Trump being kind of at odds with the polling and what Justin was saying with Republican voters as well, I wonder if this has kind of just gotten past Donald Trump because you get the sense here that a dam has broken. And I mean, walking in, I'll say that this morning to the office, literally every network over the last three days really has been covering nonstop the fear around what AI could pose to American society and to global society.

6:40And yeah, you do get the feeling now that perhaps this discussion has reached some sort of breaking point where there could be regulation. Whether that comes from Congress, it's hard to believe much will come from Congress right now, but it could be. And you do get the sense that there's a consensus here now. Yeah, and it's creating some strange bedfellows. There's a conference in Washington tomorrow, the Pro Human Assembly, has the veteran socialist senator Bernie Sanders speaking alongside the right-wing activist Steve Bannon, both of them calling for more guardrails on AI. So that shows you the concern bridges the political divide.

7:14It's fascinating. I suppose it's not impossible that Donald Trump changes his position. Sometimes he's had a position before. Oh, and he's very successfully done that in the past, and nobody ever seems to know or notice. I mean, when he does, we occasionally want to say, well, he wasn't saying that a few weeks ago, but then it doesn't seem to matter to his voters increasingly. Or used not to in the past, I suppose, actually, whether it matters in the future. I don't know whether something has happened that he's just decided. I mean, when you think of how he makes his money and all the kind of bets that his family are making financially, you do wonder.

7:47And the fact he's only got another couple of years, but more. But that thing about, Sumi was saying about the networks following it all, you know, he's a keen consumer of TV. And if he thinks, well, actually, this is what people care about. Yeah, I mean, but the politics of it is interesting. I wonder if he's quite noticed or he's been told the extent to which... So both Sumi and Sarah are saying the politics has changed, that public opinion is now very riled up. Yes, and it was. We did an edition about this. We did an episode about it. And frankly, we all thought, oh, dear, it's a bit boring.

8:15It's going to be quite dry. But I'm glad we did it. It was a few months ago because actually the politics then were, it was a left-wing cause, and it very much is. But suddenly now, it's not anymore. It's a right-wing cause as well, as they were saying. And actually, when you look at the polls on the Republican side of the ledger, people are just as upset, particularly about the data centres, if not so much about the safety, but particularly about the data centres, they are on the left. Yeah. Well, obviously, we'll keep an eye on that and any further posts on Truth Social. We've got other things we want to get through.

8:45Donald Trump's trip to Ireland specifically, Specifically, the US president landed this bombshell when he was asked for his view on Irish unification. I'd love to see it unify. I think it would be a great feather in everybody's cap. You know what? The way I look at it, it's going to happen eventually. It will happen now. We're talking about it. You've got the right man over here to get it moving, but I think it would be a fantastic thing. Now, the UK will have something to say about it, obviously, but I think it would be a great thing. I mean, how can it be bad? We've had a lot of questions on this, like this from Pete.

9:18If any other sitting president had said this, they would absolutely dominate the front page news. There would be uproar. Once again, I find myself completely dumbfounded at how much the world has changed. Sue me. Yep, you know, that is a very fair point. President Trump makes many statements and floats a lot of ideas that world leaders in his position would not get away with, and that is true. And I thought the Taoiseach said it best when he said, Taoiseach Martin said, that these comments should not come as a surprise because, you know, the president has, you know, different perspectives. And I think that is the way to look at it.

9:54I mean, the fact that it was floated during his trip to Ireland, I think it did make some waves back here in the U.S. But just to the extent that obviously this really would rock the boat in Ireland and across the U.K. is, you know, something that I think all of us could see coming on this end in the U.S. And here people were kind of shrugging because this is the same president, of course, who a week or two earlier has renamed Ontario to Lake America and talked about Canada as an enemy and so on and so forth. We could go through all of kind of the foreign policy messaging of President Trump. But it is perhaps at this point unsurprising to hear President Trump kind of wade into what is a very thorny and tricky foreign policy issue.

10:35You know, the American mind doesn't grasp Littgenstein or any kind of smaller border in Europe. And they certainly don't really grasp the border between the north and the south of Ireland unless they are themselves Irish and they understand the issue. You know, out in Kansas, I don't think many people think that's a terribly wise border. It looks a bit weird. And to that extent, the ignoring of the politics is not just a Trump thing. I mean, you go back to Henry Kissinger, actually, remember that famous thing, who do I call when I want to call Europe? There is this American sense that, for goodness sake, get yourself together.

11:09You're too tiny and too ludicrous, really, for us to be bothered with, and it would be better if you all won. And I suppose, going to Pete's point, if he was a more, quote, conventional president, you'd only say something like that if you were then going to do something about it to sort of bring it back, you know. Yes. Because he's just said what he thinks, and he's not going to, you know, and then he packs up and he goes back and throws it on. Very good point. Right, let's move on. We've got a question now. Mary is on the line from Brighton. Hello, Mary. Hello, Matt and AmeriCast team. Yeah, my question is about Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, because what's happened to him in the sense that we know that he came out of rehab, I think, last month and then hasn't really been seen since mid-June.

11:48And I read somewhere that he's supposed to be returning to Capitol Hill today. But what does that actually mean? Because Kentucky have had no representative, no acting senator for all that time. And what does it mean for the midterms? So his seat will be up in the elections on the 3rd of November. Some point at the start of the new year, he'll no longer be a senator. And he has been in hospital for three or four months now, I think. So, yeah, it's true that one of Kentucky's two senators has been unable to take part in votes in the Senate during that time. And he may or may not appear for what I think is only going to be a very short number of weeks.

12:25The midterms are in like seven weeks now. And so I think there is only about three or four weeks of the Senate left to go before he would be a lame duck anyway. But for strange reasons that I don't entirely understand, the Internet has become obsessed. Have you met the Internet before? That's Marianne. Why are some weird 80-something-year-old Senator is causing so many waves when he's... It's not that controversial. Other senators have taken a few months away for health care reasons. I don't think anybody truly believes he isn't unwell. and he seems to be alive. We've seen some proof of life photographs.

13:00So I'm a bit confused as to why people have got so conspiracy minded about this. I think it's the awkwardness of the proof of life photos that's part of it. They have kind of spawned these incredible conspiracies and people picking apart every aspect of Mitch McConnell's photos. And I guess, you know, if you think about it, Mitch McConnell is also someone who is somewhat known on the global stage. But you're right that at this point, and to the part of the question of what impact will this have, close to none. House and Senate, they're all heading off on midterm campaigning soon, some of the senators and all of the House of Representatives.

13:34And he was anyways a lame duck senator. So this is going to have little to no impact, but still, it's interesting. Isn't the point, though, that the governor of Kentucky is a Democrat, and if he were dead and proven to be dead, then the governor of Kentucky, by dint of being governor, would have the right to replace him. And there was a conspiracy theory that he might replace him with Thomas Massey, who's the Republican congressman who's lost his job because Trump got him out in a primary because Massey has been a nuisance over Jeffrey Epstein. And so I think the conspiracy... I have no idea whether this was genuinely possible or not, but I think at one stage they thought the governor would replace him if he was dead with someone who would be a real thorn in the side of the administration because they'd come to Washington with the Epstein obsession and be a senator forever for how long?

14:28Have I just made that up, guys? It was discussed and it's constitutionally correct, but one, Mitch McConnell wasn't dead, but also two, even if that situation came to pass, it would only be for a few weeks. And whilst you could maybe cause a bit of trouble in the Senate, it's not like you're talking about appointing somebody for a six-year Senate term and them being in there for that whole time. Well, thank you for that, Mary. I hope we've cleared that up.

14:52thank you thanks mary that's mary in brighton there uh right very good let's move on uh we'll try and get a couple more final questions in we've had absolutely loads of questions about the five thousand dollars that donald trump offered every adult american if republicans win back the house and the senate in this year's midterm elections mary ann sent us a voice note howdy Hey, AmeriCast from a wet and miserable Northern Ireland this morning. How, in blue blazes, can Trump promise$5 ,000 to people who will vote for him? Is this what it boils down to now? We have to give money to get a vote? Is he this desperate that he knows he may possibly lose both houses?

15:35Well, this is... Now, paint me cynical, if you will, Justin. We definitely see this in British politics. The parties who know they're not going to win elections tend to make slightly more outlandish promises than those who think that they might. Yeah, you're exactly right. And I think the whole point of this promise, and number one, is it illegal? No, probably not. You're not meant to bribe people directly. And remember, Elon Musk got into trouble in the state of Pennsylvania, possibly elsewhere as well, during the last election, because there seemed to be a competition he was running where you could win money.

16:02But I think in the end, actually, the Supreme Court... I mean, this is essentially... I mean, there's no difference promising a tax cut. Exactly, yeah. And that's what it effectively will be argued it is if it ever did go to the Supreme Court. But the really important point is exactly the one you make, it seems to me. It suggests they don't intend to win because if they did win, they'd have a massive extra hole in an already gaping hole budget. And the bond markets would go crazy. It's interesting, the bond markets didn't really react as far as I can see to the promise. In other words, nobody believes they're going to win.

16:32It's all baked in. So maybe it's a bit of trying to get out the vote and all that. Right, very good. Now, I want to finish off with two final thoughts. Donald Trump's playlist. He made a point when he was flying to and from Ireland of checking that the journalists with him on Air Force One were enjoying his hand-picked music. I just wanted to make sure everyone's OK with the music, right? We loved it, Mr President. Are you OK? I'm only back here. I gave you a press conference before we got on. The music's great, right? Yes, it's great. OK? That was fantastic. Were you picking your song? I picked myself.

17:05I want to make you happy. So I'm playing wonderful music, happy music. Dolly Parton was the best. Dali was the greatest. That was a sad moment when Dali left us. We have a lot of Dali songs on there, but Dali was... Yeah, you're a big music guy. I love music. I love good music. That's what keeps me happy. Are you across what's on the list, Sumi? Yeah, so Jolene from Dolly Parton, which of course is a classic, and Dolly Parton having recently passed away is a nice tribute. Dorma by Pavarotti, Fernando by ABBA, Teenage Wasteland by The Who. So quite a mix of genres and tastes there. But we know the president is an avid fan of all sorts of music genres.

17:51And something we've heard a lot of reporting about, I've never been there myself in Mar-a-Lago, was that at dinnertime he'll come out and bring out his iPad and become the DJ and play all of his favorite tunes. And he's got such an eclectic sense of or taste in music that I bet it's incredibly entertaining. So I guess the journalists on Air Force One get to, well, they get to be part of that little mini concert that Donald Trump gives as well. It's incredibly similar to the playlist that you get, all of his political rallies and events that for a long time before and after the action happens on stage.

18:25And because I was at that convention in Dallas, that meant from about 10 o 'clock in the morning until the first speakers appeared at four in the afternoon, we were listening to what was essentially Donald Trump's playlist, including a lot of the songs that they had on Air Force One. And there's a lot of music I can never listen to again without associating it with standing in the heat somewhere, waiting hours and hours for Donald Trump to arrive. And things that weren't necessarily your favourite songs in the first place, but stuck in your head forever afterwards. Like particularly Lee Greenwood's Proud to be an American, which is the song that precedes Donald Trump walking on stage every single time.

19:01Once you've heard that once, it's in a loop in your head for days. He also has on the list the walk-on music for the WWE wrestler The Undertaker, which, I mean, the period when I used to watch the wrestling, that's very much like mid to late 90s, The Undertaker. You can really date the man, can't you, just by what's on his playlist. He feels like he'd be a great wedding DJ. Yeah, which could be his next career, I suppose. Well, on the subject of wrestling, there's one final question we need to ask Justin. Because you weren't here last week, Justin, and somebody asked the question, who would win an armwessel between you and Anthony?

19:39And this is what the panel made up of Mariana, Sarah and Sumi said. That Anthony would win? Yeah, there's steely resolve underneath the nice guy persona from Anthony, isn't there? I have to go with Anthony as well. None of them thought you could beat Anthony. OK, we'll do it. We'll do it. Next time he comes. I've been at the gym, Anthony. I was going to say, you're looking quite true. I thought we said that in confidence. I knew it would come up eventually, Matt. It's only going to be a matter of time. The next time it's an AmeriCast live, this feels like the encore. Yeah. Yeah.

20:20OK, we said goodbye now to Matt Chorley, but we are still here. And I think we should talk a bit more about AI because there's so much to be said about it. It's not just AI itself and the threats that it might pose, but also, of course, these data centers that have been popping up everywhere or being in the process of being built everywhere right around the United States, particularly in rural places. And it really is beginning to be a big issue. And there's a headline, guys, in The New York Times, isn't there? As fears of AI catastrophe magnify, Washington stirs but mostly slumbers. And it's really interesting, isn't it, the extent to which in both parties, They're just waking up now to something that could, for good or ill for either of them, be a really big deal.

21:03Yeah, there are reports that there was a meeting of democratic strategists looking forward to the midterm elections and to 2028 to the next presidential election, at which former President Barack Obama was saying that Democrats really needed to try and own this issue about AI regulation for data centres and for the power of the technology itself. because this was something that voters were going to be becoming increasingly worried about, that the Republicans basically left the field empty for that and that Democrats needed to come in and try and own this issue. It has to be said, not a huge amount of them in Washington have done or said very much about this.

21:38I think it's a Republican Senator, Josh Hawley, who's probably done the most on this, along with Bernie Sanders, who's issued a lot of concerns about the economic repercussions of AI. But it's something that, and Sumi, I don't know if you know why, that you've got representatives and senators here who must know that this is of concern to their constituents but don't seem to have much to say about it? They do. I think it just hadn't reached the critical mass to this point. There have been a few individual members of Congress who have spent a lot of time looking at AI. So the Republican Jay Obernolte of California has been kind of the head of the AI task force for Congress.

22:13Laurie Trahan, Democrat, a congresswoman, has also kind of been leading the push for Democrats. Ro Khanna, someone who's talked quite a bit, the Democrat, of course, from California, about AI regulation. So individuals have been speaking about the necessity to put guardrails on artificial intelligence and its development for several months now. But I think it really needed that type of warning call that we saw from Jacob Coxon of formerly Anthropic and OpenAI last week that really spawned this entire debate over regulation. And the data center aspect of this has been brewing for several months.

22:48And you have seen Democrats there kind of really take up the mantle of that cause more than Republicans. But something to think about is data centers, in a way, are just a proxy for how voters feel about AI, right? I mean, they're not necessarily only opposing these fairly ugly structures that are loud and can take up a lot of electricity and water. It's also kind of the nameless, faceless development of a technology they don't feel they're a part of, that they don't feel they're actually benefiting from. And that has now culminated in this push for regulation with leaders in the industry saying, you know, we have maybe six to 12 months before these AI agents, another swarm, could then knock out the entire internet.

23:28And I think it's that kind of double punch between data centers and now this real warning call that has led people to where they are now. And on the data centers, it's really interesting, isn't it? It's a proxy for everything, really, that you feel is going wrong if you're a rural voter in particular. And you've got the tariffs and you've got all the things that are making life more difficult, not to mention, of course, the price of diesel in particular, but the price of gas, price of petrol as well, and inflation more generally and all the things that you thought you'd been promised that aren't happening.